The Primeval Era-Chapter 7: Persevere I

In the time before time, when The Lands of Stone were young and the first mountains had yet to learn how to walk, there was only darkness.

It was not the darkness of night, which knows that dawn will come, nor the darkness of closed eyes, which can open whenever they choose.

This was the darkness of the void. The darkness that existed before existence itself had learned to exist. It was absolute, and it was everything.

And then, something defied it.

No one knows what that First Defiance was.

Some say it was a sound. Others say it was a thought. The eldest Warrior Shamans of the Eldest Tribes whisper that it was a word, spoken in a language that predates all languages, something so ancient that to speak even a single letter of it is to touch the very foundation of reality.

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Darkness was something that Damian was very much used to.

Sometimes, to him, it was synonymous with failure.

Every night when he went to sleep, the darkness came. It wrapped around him like a burial shroud, and in its depths, he would see the flames again. He would hear the screams. He would feel the helplessness of a boy watching everything he loved burn while his own body betrayed him, unable to hold or feel even the smallest drop of Mana.

The darkest nights of failure years ago had nearly overwhelmed him. The grief had been a living thing, a beast that gnawed at his chest from the inside. There were moments when he thought the darkness would simply swallow him whole, and he would cease to be.

But he had gone past all of that darkness eventually.

Uncle Adam had been there. His rules- his Doctrines had been there. The simple act of planting seeds and watching them grow had been there, a small defiance against the void that said life continues, even when it seems impossible.

Right now, though, he seemed to be in an endless darkness that would forever grab hold of him.

This was different.

This was not the darkness of sleep or grief or failure as this was... the darkness of ending.

He did not like it.

He did not want it.

He wanted to change it.

But how?

By all means, he felt that horrendous pain and knew that very likely, his chest was torn apart. His heart and anything else vital should be gone as well. He had felt the Mana-infused spear rip through him. He had felt his ribs crack and his flesh part. He had felt the warmth of his own blood leaving his body. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

But just because his chest was torn, did he have to die?

Just because his heart was likely torn apart, did that mean he was dead?

Who decided this?

The Butcher?

The cruel Lands of Stone?

Existence itself, which had already taken so much from him?

Why could he not make the decision himself on whether he was alive or dead?

His heart and chest simply needed to stitch themselves back together. Flesh needed to knit. Bone needed to mend. Blood needed to stay where it belonged.

It was simple.

It was obvious.

It just needed to happen.

So...

’Heal.’

He tried to yell out into the darkness.

’Heal!’

He tried again, pushing every ounce of will he possessed into the command.

But all that remained was endless darkness.

He felt like he had arrived at a point where he needed to be. There was something here, something at the edge of his perception. A possibility...a door that had always been closed but now stood slightly ajar.

But he was still missing something to make it happen.

He did not like how things were.

He wanted to change so many things.

Right now, Uncle Adam was likely about to die. The old soldier who had given everything to protect a crippled prince. The only family Damian had left in all the cruel Lands of Stone.

He did not want that to happen.

He could not let that happen.

So he needed to...

|Persevere.|

BOOM!

A deeper voice boomed out in the darkness.

A voice that he unmistakably recognized as his own, yet was not his own. It was his voice if his voice had been forged in the heart of a distant Ancestral Mountain. His voice if his voice had been spoken at the dawn of creation. His voice carrying weight that could crack mountains and still oceans.

And with that voice came light.

A shining dot of cerulean singularity bloomed in the void.

It was not the word he had been trying to yell out. It was not "heal" or any word he knew. It was a type of sound, a type of letter from a language he had never heard before.

But he understood it somehow when he heard it.

A letter.

A single letter that held such a grand meaning.

Persevere. Continue. Endure. Refuse to end. Defy the darkness that seeks to swallow you. Stand when standing is impossible. Breathe when breathing should have stopped. Live when living is no longer permitted.

All of this, contained in a single sound.

And Damian tried to replicate it.

Delicately, carefully, he tried to move invisible lips to call out the letter. His entire being focused on that singular point of light in the darkness. His will, his defiance, his desperate need to continue, all of it poured into the attempt to speak what should not be speakable.

"Persevere."

BOOM!

Light filled absolutely everything.